Imperial Woodpecker Campephilus imperialis Scientific name definitions

The largest woodpecker in the world, the Imperial Woodpecker inhabited old-growth pine forests in central and northwestern Mexico above 1,900 m elevation (mostly 2,300 m and up), in flat or lightly undulating table lands prone to settlement. Reported to occur in pairs or in small groups, highly vocal, and habitually returning to the same dead trees and logs to forage for large beetle grubs in the wood, this species proved an easy target once firearms became widely available to residents within its range and is now considered extinct. First described by John Gould (1 Gould, J. (1832) Specimens were exhibited of a species of woodpecker, hitherto undescribed. Proceedings of the Committee of Science and Correspondence of the Zoological Society of London 2: 139-140. Close ) in the same year that Charles Darwin was aboard the HMS Beagle, the last museum specimen of this Mexican endemic was collected in the northern Sierra Madre Occidental in 1947. Unverified reports indicated a few Imperial Woodpeckers may have survived somewhat later, but the last confirmed record (and only photographic documentation) was in 1956 when William L. Rhein made a short film , which included footage of a lone female. Early naturalists noted intensive hunting pressure reduced populations, and from 1930 onward its habitat was subjected to widespread logging that not only took out large pines for timber and pulp, on which the species depended for insect food and nest cavities, but resulted in access roads for people who shot Imperial Woodpeckers for food, folk remedies, and out of curiosity. With only 124 years from the time of the Imperial Woodpecker’s scientific description to the lone female photographed by Rhein, the loss of this species represents one of the most rapid continental bird extinctions yet documented. Although individual birds may have persisted after that date, no populations or breeding records have been verified since that time. A Mexican endemic, it is distinguished from the closely related Ivory-billed Woodpecker (C. principalis) by the absence of a white stripe on its black neck and face, larger size, and proportionally larger crest.

Sheldon (2 Sheldon, C. (1925) The big game of Chihuahua, Mexico, 1898-1902. Pages 138-181 in Hunting and conservation (C. Sheldon and G. B. Grinnell, Editors). Boone and Crockett Club and Yale University Press, New York York and New Haven, Connecticut. Close ) fondly reminisced about his experiences with these great birds:

“Frequently, giant imperial woodpeckers were seen, the largest of the family in the world, ever active, running up the pines or flying from one to another–their trumpet calls incessantly sounding. When in the woods who, when he sees a woodpecker, does not pause to observe it with peculiar interest? The sight of the large pileated in our northern forests is ever a cause for some excitement. But imagine seeing from time to time all through the day woodpeckers twenty-two inches in length, with glossy blue-black bodies relieved by the white lower halves of the wings, and the long recurved red crests of the males and the black crests of the females!”